


Mutual Hunger; Mutual Safety

by Viola_Laterra



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Extended Scene, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 11:44:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17528090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viola_Laterra/pseuds/Viola_Laterra
Summary: Left alone after the war to reassemble a life of her own, Katniss eventually feels safe enough to pursue a different kind of hunger.(extended version of the scene from the book; written 20 December 2017)





	Mutual Hunger; Mutual Safety

Though it was months since the end of the war, maybe it had even been the better part of a year -- I couldn't tell time terribly well anymore, though I was getting back my ability to read the seasons as I'd been able to go out hunting more -- I still woke screaming with nightmares.

And Peeta was there, arms around me, holding me tight, making soothing sounds, smoothing my hair back. It was really something, I thought, because he himself wasn't free of flashbacks or terrible moments. I didn't feel like I was as good at helping him as he was with me. But then that had always been true. And I still tried, anyway.

As I calmed a little, and went from fight-or-flight to the delocalized, dull sense of fear that always followed it, he was kissing my hair, the edge of my ear, my neck, my cheek. And as the fear ebbed in the face of his presence, his touch, I returned the gesture, kissed him on the neck, on the cheek, and then on the lips.

How many times since we'd been back here in District 12 had he kissed me, just like this, when I woke in the night, soothing me, helping the fear go away? And how many times had I kissed him, in the last three years? And only twice had it felt real, had it gone straight to my core and triggered a wave of warmth, a wave of hunger. And as I kissed him tonight, I realized I felt it again, that thing I'd felt on the beach in the Quarter Quell. The hunger of desire. And no one was here to watch us now, so as I kissed him, kissed him back harder, I let him feel it, how much I wanted him.

And as hands slipped inside clothing, and clothing was shed, and we moved against each other, as I just let the hunger drive me... I noticed that any shyness about his body I had once had was long gone, and that his desire for mine was extremely apparent. Probably something he'd felt all along. But it had taken all the dangers and horrors and salvation we'd endured for me to feel it like he did. And it had taken me showing him my desire, for him to show me fullness of his.

As I followed the desire where it wanted to go, following instinct about what to do, how to move, where to move, I realized that no other person in the world made me feel safe enough to let these barriers drop, to be willing to be this vulnerable, to feel this hunger, let alone to follow it to its logical conclusion. And that Peeta's ability to help me find my way back -- our way back -- from horror, was the only thing that would allow me to survive this life. That it had been that way from almost the beginning. Even with the bread, all those years ago. Even as a child, he'd known what I needed to survive.

Gale might have known me intimately, I might have loved him deeply, and still did, but he could never have pulled me from nightmare into the possibility of life being good the way Peeta was doing right now. The way Peeta had done, so many times. And as I felt him inside me, around me, my whole world for the moment, and I felt the hunger give way to waves of pleasure, I also felt a deep sense of gratitude. 

As the pleasure ebbed away, as we both got quiet, he whispered to me, "You love me. Real or not real?" And I realized how often it hadn't been real, it had been for the cameras. How much he must have doubted it, when we'd been playacting for the Capitol, and then of course when he'd been hijacked with their false memories; this simple question belied many vulnerabilities, all at once. But I also realized how it had always been real, somewhere deep down, my love for the boy with the bread. And how I had no doubt that it was true now. So I told him, "Real."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after I'd both seen the movies and read the books. I'd written a very similar scene after watching the movies, but then found that Collins had conceived of this happening at the end of her story (omitted from the movies); but she still elided some details that I decided to include. In this case, I kept the style much closer to the author's, first-person at least, if not present-tense, so it makes an interesting comparison with the other version I wrote earlier.


End file.
